Valverde lands psychological blow

Alejandro Valverde is confident that he will now win the Vuelta after successfully marking the attacks of Alexandre Vinokourov and Carlos Sastre and putting time into his other rivals on stage 16.

"My performance today is a very important step ahead, especially from a psychological point of view because, of the three stages of mountain which remained before today, this was the one I considered the hardest and the one that I feared the most, more than the Pandera stage," said Valverde.

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